Einstein, Albert - Dictionary definition of Einstein, Albert | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary Einstein, Albert U.S. Immigration and Migration Reference Library COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group, Inc. Albert Einstein Physicist "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." A lbert Einstein was already a world-famous scientist when he immigrated to the United States in 1933. Over his lifetime, he had three nationalities: German, Swiss, and American. He also was Jewish, which led him to support the founding of the state of Israel. But as the top physicist in the twentieth century, Einstein in some ways rose above nationalities to become a citizen of the world. His story as a world citizen cast a different light on the larger subject of emigration and migration across national borders. Not a promising young student Albert Einstein was the son of a middle-class Jewish businessman. Einstein was born in Germany, a country that had been unified into a single state only eight years before his birth. Previously, a group of kingdoms, of which Prussia was the largest, had occupied the territory brought together into a single kingdom in 1870.

When he was a boy, Einstein's father, Hermann, moved his family to Munich, where he and a brother opened a factory manufacturing electrical equipment. The family later moved to Milan, Italy, in 1894, before Einstein had graduated from high school. Einstein did not have a reputation as a brilliant or even an excellent student. He was regarded as rebellious, a young man who preferred to study topics in math and science that interested him and to ignore assignments that did not. He paid a price for his independent streak in 1895, when the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich rejected his application. Einstein spent a year studying subjects in which he was considered weak. He was finally admitted to the Swiss university in 1896 with the intention of becoming a teacher of physics and math. Even then, Einstein did not impress all of his teachers. He graduated in 1901 and became a Swiss citizen, but he could not find a teaching job without the recommendation of all his teachers. Instead, Einstein got a job working for the Swiss government, examining applications for patents.

(A patent is a claim by an inventor for the exclusive right, during a limited period of time, to use an invention to make money. Applications are examined to make sure the so-called invention really is new.) Einstein's job required technical knowledge, but it is often represented as a low-grade clerical job. It did not enjoy the prestige of a teaching post at a major university, but it did allow Einstein plenty of free time to work on his first love, which was physics, and to enjoy his marriage in 1903 to Mileva Maric of Hungary, a student Einstein had met at the Institute of Technology. The couple had two sons and were divorced in 1919. Einstein later married his widowed cousin, Elsa Einstein, whom he had known since he was a child. 1905: The year of sudden acclaim The story of Albert Einstein is not one of a scientist working for years to develop a new explanation for the world he sees around him.

To the contrary, just a few years out of Zurich, Einstein published a series of scientific papers in a single year—1905—that permanently established his reputation as one of the modern world's great scientists on a par with Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). One of the papers Einstein published in 1905 was on the topic of what is called Einstein's "special theory of relativity." It was a mathematical demonstration that showed that light moves at the same speed regardless of its source or the motion of the observer. (The speed of an object, on the other hand, is relative to the observer. A car may seem to be moving at 30 miles an hour to someone standing still; to someone moving towards the first car at the same speed, the first car seems to be moving at 60 miles an hour.

Einstein's theory said that regardless of whether an observer is moving toward or away from light, the speed of light is always approximately 186,000 miles per second.) Also in 1905, Einstein published four other papers: on the effects of electric currents; the phenomenon of "Brownian motion" (the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in liquids or gases, which Einstein realized could prove the existence of molecules and atoms too small to observe in the most powerful microscope); the emission and absorption of light; and the inertia of energy (inertia is the quality of matter that keeps objects at rest steady, or keeps objects in motion moving, until some other force acts on them). Over the next decade, other physicists began analyzing and evaluating Einstein's work, and his reputation soared. Scientific recognition Einstein, who had not been able to get a job teaching physics, became an international scientific celebrity. In 1909, he became a professor of physics at the University of Zurich. Two years later, he became a professor at German University in Prague (now capital of the Czech Republic), and the year after that he became a professor at his own school, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

In 1913, the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin made Einstein a member of their influential society and invited him to become director of scientific research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. He accepted the offer and moved to Berlin, where he remained for the next nineteen years. Einstein and the Theory of Relativity Sir Isaac Newton, a pioneer in the study of the nature of objects and of objects in motion (the science of physics), is often credited with "discovering" gravity, when an apple fell from a tree and hit his head. Newton wrote extensively about gravity and its effect on objects. For over two hundred years, Newton was the recognized authority on the subject. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein challenged Newton's theories. In Einstein's views, things that might seem obvious to the observer are sometimes not. For example, the same clock might tick at a different speed when it is near a giant object, such as the Sun. Light, which is thought to travel very fast (186,000 miles per second) may also be affected by large objects. A second (the unit of time) might be longer or shorter, depending on gravity.

In Einstein's view, it is all "relative." Here is how Professor Alan Lightman (1948–) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains Einstein's theory of relativity on a Web site sponsored by Nova, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program that focuses on scientific subjects: What was General Relativity? Einstein's earlier theory of time and space, Special Relativity, proposed that distance and time are not absolute. The ticking rate of a clock depends on the motion of the observer of that clock; likewise for the length of a 'yard stick.' Published in 1915, General Relativity proposed that gravity, as well as motion, can affect the intervals of time and of space. The key idea of General Relativity, called the Equivalence Principle, is that gravity pulling in one direction is completely equivalent to an acceleration in the opposite direction. (A car accelerating forwards feels just like sideways gravity pushing you back against your seat. An elevator accelerating upwards feels just like gravity pushing you into the floor. If gravity is equivalent to acceleration, and if motion affects measurements of time and space (as shown in Special Relativity), then it follows that gravity does so as well.

In particular, the gravity of any mass, such as our sun, has the effect of warping the space and time around it. For example, the angles of a triangle no longer add up to 180 degrees and clocks tick more slowly the closer they are to a gravitational mass like the sun. Many of the predictions of General Relativity, such as the bending of starlight by gravity and a tiny shift in the orbit of the planet Mercury, have been quantitatively confirmed by experiment. Einstein's theories are not easy to understand, and indeed he was not explaining events he had witnessed, as Newton did in developing his theory of gravitation. Einstein's theories were just that—ideas generated from his scientific imagination—until the observations of light being deflected during a solar eclipse behaved in exactly the way Einstein had predicted. Scientists in other countries also admired his work. In 1919, British scientists traveled to Príncipe Island, off the west coast of Africa, and photographed a total solar eclipse (a shadowing of the Sun when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun).

Their photographs confirmed one of Einstein's startling predictions: that beams of light could be "bent" or "deflected" when passing near a huge mass such as the Sun. Days after the observation, the New York Times reported on the observation with the headline: "Lights All Askew In The Heavens. Men Of Science More Or Less Agog Over Results Of Eclipse Observations. Einstein Theory Triumphs." Two years later, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Einstein and politics Physics was not the only subject of interest to Einstein. Far from being a remote professor uninformed about world events, Einstein was a pacifist, one who does not believe in participating in wars. From 1914 to 1918, Europe experienced the most destructive, deadly war fought to that date, World War I. Rather than springing to the defense of his nation, Einstein insisted that it was morally wrong to fight in an army, an attitude that won him widespread criticism at home in Germany. Einstein was also a strong supporter of Zionism, the idea that Jews deserved their own country situated in Palestine, the land of the Bible.

Zionism became a political movement among European Jews starting in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, partly in reaction to continuing religious discrimination. Einstein the emigrant In 1933, the National Socialist (Nazi) Party led by Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) won a majority in the German parliament, or legislature, after preaching intense hatred of Jews, whom the Nazis blamed for many of Germany's economic problems. At the time of the election, Einstein and his wife were visiting the United States, and Einstein declared that he would not return to Germany. The scientist was immediately welcomed by other scientists in the United States. Einstein had already agreed to spend part of the year at a newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; he was then persuaded by Hitler's rise to power to work full–time at the institute. In the world of science, Einstein's presence added immediate status to the new institute and was a loss to German scientists.

Hitler, who a decade later launched the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews and others he disapproved of, had based part of his political philosophy on the notion that Germans, as representatives of something he called the "Aryan" race, were superior to other peoples of the world and were therefore entitled to dominate others. In Hitler's views, Jews were distinctly inferior. Of course, in the world of science, the existence of Albert Einstein was living evidence of the inaccuracy of Hitler's racist theory. During the 1930s, Einstein wrote not only about science but also about politics. He frequently criticized the policies of Hitler in Germany and urged Western nations like the United States to oppose those policies. In 1938, after a breakthrough in physics in Germany, Einstein wrote a letter to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) urging government support for research into how to make a bomb using new discoveries about atoms.

Einstein himself never participated in the research that resulted in the production of nuclear weapons, and he was shocked and horrified when the United States dropped two such bombs on Japan in August 1945 to end World War II (1939–45) in the Pacific. In later years, Einstein wrote essays on the desirability of a single world government that would, in effect, do away with individual nations. Although Einstein was always able to attract attention simply on the strength of his name, most of his political ideas were largely ignored. Although Einstein continued working in the field of physics, his most important works had all been published by 1920. Thereafter, he was a revered figure in science, and he used his position to try to influence politics. During the period of Nazi rule in Germany, Einstein was one of thousands of Jews who successfully fled the country to live elsewhere; an estimated eight million others were not so lucky: they perished in the Holocaust. Whether there were other Einsteins among them will never be known. Einstein retired from teaching in 1945, although he continued work on his own. In 1952, Einstein turned down an offer to become the president of Israel.

The scientist died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1955 at the age of seventy-six. —James L. Outman Pais, Abraham. Einstein Lived Here. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Parker, Barry R. Einstein's Brainchild: Relativity Made Relatively Easy! Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000. Strathern, Paul. Einstein and Relativity. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1999. Swisher, Clarice, ed. Albert Einstein. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2001. Periodicals Holton, Gerald. "The Migration of Physicists to the United States." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (April 1984): p. 18. Oberbye, Dennis. "New Details Emerge from the Einstein Files; How the FBI Tracked His Phone Calls and His Trash." New York Times (May 7, 2002): p. D1 (Science Times). Web Sites "Einstein Revealed." Nova. (accessed on March 12, 2004). Lightman, Alan.

"Relativity and the Cosmos." Nova. (accessed on March 12, 2004). Cite this article Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: Modern Language Association Dr. Albert Einstein Dies in Sleep at 76; World Mourns Loss of Great Scientist Dr.

Albert Einstein Dies in Sleep at 76; World Mourns Loss of Great Scientist By THE NEW YORK TIMES Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, Wuerttemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. His boyhood was spent in Munich, where his father, who owned electro-technical works, had settled. The family migrated to Italy in 1894, and Albert was sent to a cantonal school at Aarau in Switzerland. He attended lectures while supporting himself by teaching mathematics and physics at the Polytechnic School at Zurich until 1900. Finally, after a year as tutor at Schaffthausen, he was appointed examiner of patents at the Patent Office at Bern where, having become a Swiss citizen, he remained until 1909. It was in this period that he obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Zurich and published his first papers on physical subjects. These were so highly esteemed that in 1909 he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich.

In 1911 he accepted the Chair of Physics at Prague, only to be induced to return to his own Polytechnic School at Zurich as full professor the next year. In 1913 a special position was created for him in Berlin as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute. He was elected a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and received a stipend sufficient to enable him to devote all his time to research without any restrictions or routine duties. Elected to Royal Society He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1921, having also been made previously a member of the Amsterdam and Copenhagen Academies, while the Universities of Geneva, Manchester, Rostock and Princeton conferred honorary degrees on him. In 1925 he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society and in 1926 the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his theory of relativity. He received a Nobel Price in 1921. Honors continued to be conferred on him. He was made a member of the Institute de France, one of the few foreigners ever to achieve such a distinction.

Other great universities throughout the world, including Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Zurich, Yeshiva, Harvard, London and Brussels, awarded honorary doctorates to him. One of the highest American scientific honors, the Franklin Institute Medal, came to him in 1935, when he startled the scientific world by failing to deliver more than a mere "thank-you" in lieu of the scientific address customary on such occasions. He made up for it later by contributing an important paper to the Journal of the Franklin Institute dealing with ideas, he explained, that were not quite ripe at the time he received the medal. Dr. Einstein married Mileva Marec, a fellow-student in Switzerland, in 1901. They had two sons, Albert Einstein Jr., an electrical engineer who also came to this country, and Eduard. The marriage ended in divorce. He married again, in 1917, this time his cousin, Elsa Einstein, a widow with two daughters. She died in Princeton in 1936. To Institute at Princeton in '32 When the Institute for Advanced Study was organized in 1932 Dr.

Einstein was offered and accepted, the place of Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and served, also, as the Head of the Mathematics Department. The institute was situated at Princeton, N.J., and Dr. Einstein made plans to live there about half of each year. These plans were changed suddenly. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany and essential human liberty, even for Jews with world reputations like Dr. Einstein, became impossible in Germany. He announced that he would not return to Berlin, sailed for Europe and went to Belgium. Immediately many nations invited him to make his home in their lands. In the late spring of 1933 Dr. Einstein learned, in Belgium, that his two step-daughters had been forced to flee Germany. Not long after that he was notified through the press that he had been ousted from the supervising board of the German Bureau of Standards. His home at Caputh was sacked by Hitler Brown Shirts on the allegation that the world-renowned physicist and pacifist had a vast store of arms hidden there. The Prussian Academy of Science expelled him and also attacked him for having made statements regarding Hitler atrocities.

His reply was this: "I do not want to remain in a state where individuals are not conceded equal rights before the law for freedom of speech and doctrine." In September of 1933 he fled from Belgium and went into seclusion on the coast of England, fearful that the Nazis had plans upon his life. Then he journeyed to Princeton and made his home there. He bought a home in Princeton and settled down to pass his remaining years there. In 1940 he became a citizen of the United States. Einstein Noted as an Iconoclast In Research, Politics and Religion His Early Spare-Time Reflections in Bern Led to Strong Belief in Social Equality and Hope for a World Government In 1904, Albert Einstein, then an obscure young man of 25, could be seen daily in the late afternoon wheeling a baby carriage on the streets of Bern, Switzerland, halting now and then, unmindful of the traffic around him, to scribble down some mathematical symbols in a notebook that shared the carriage with his infant son, also named Albert. Out of those symbols came the most explosive ideas in the age-old strivings of man to fathom the mystery of his universe.

Out of them, incidentally, came the atomic bomb, which, viewed from the long-range perspective of mankind's intellectual and spiritual history may turn out, Einstein fervently hoped, to have been just a minor by-product. With those symbols Dr. Einstein was building his theory of relativity. In that baby carriage with his infant son was Dr. Einstein's universe-in-the-making, a vast, finite-infinite four-dimensional universe, in which the conventional universe--existing in absolute three-dimensional space and in absolute three-dimensional time of past, present and future--vanished into a mere subjective shadow. Dr. Einstein was then building his universe in his spare time, on the completion of his day's routine work as a humble, $600-a-year examiner in the Government Patent Office in Bern. Published Four Papers A few months later, in 1905, the entries in the notebook were published in four epoch-making scientific papers. In the first he described a method for determining molecular dimensions. In the second he explained the photo-electric effect, the basis of electronics, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1921. In the third, he presented a molecular kinetic theory of heat.

The fourth and last paper that year, entitled "Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," a short article of thirty-one pages, was the first presentation of what became known as the Special Relativity Theory. Three of the papers were published, one at a time, in Volume 17 of the German scientific journal, Annalen der Physik, leading journal of physics in the world at the time. The fourth was printed in Volume 18. Neither Dr. Einstein, nor the world he lived in, nor man's concept of his material universe, were ever the same again. Many other scientific papers, of startling originality and intellectual boldness, were published by Dr. Einstein in the succeeding years. The scientific fraternity in the world of physics, particularly the leaders of the group, recognized from the beginning that a new star of the first magnitude had appeared on their firmament. But with the passing of time his fame spread to other circles, and by 1920 the name of Einstein had become synonymous with relativity, a theory universally regarded as so profound that only twelve men in the entire world were believed able to fathom its depths.

Legend Grew With Years Paradoxically, as the years passed, the figure of Einstein the man became more and more remote, while that of Einstein the legend came ever nearer to the masses of mankind. They grew to know him not as a universe-maker whose theories they could not hope to understand but as a world citizen, one of the outstanding spiritual leaders of his generation, a symbol of the human spirit and its highest aspirations. "The world around Einstein has changed very much since he published his first discoveries * * * but his attitude to the world around him has not changed," wrote Dr. Phillipp Frank, Dr. Einstein's biographer, in 1947. "He has remained an individualist who prefers to be unencumbered by social relations, and at the same time a fighter for social equality and human fraternity. "Many famous scholars live in the distinguished university town," (Princeton) Dr. Frank continues, "but no inhabitant will simply number Einstein as one among many other famous people. For the people of Princeton in particular and for the world at large he is not just a great scholar, but rather one of the legendary figures of the twentieth century.

Einstein's acts and words are not simply noted and judged as facts; instead each has its symbolic significance * * *" "Saintly," "noble" and "lovable" were the words used to describe him by those who knew him even casually. He radiated humor, warmth and kindliness. He loved jokes and laughed easily. Princeton residents would see him walk in their midst, a familiar figure, yet a stranger, a close neighbor, yet at the same time a visitor from another world. And as he grew older his otherworldiness became more pronounced, yet his human warmth did not diminish. Outward appearance meant nothing to him. Princetonians, old and young, soon got used to the long-haired figure in pullover sweater and unpressed slacks wandering in their midst, a knitted stocking cap covering his head in winter. "My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility," he wrote, "has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family.

These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years. "Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shiftless foundations." Center of Controversies It was this independence that made Dr. Einstein on occasions the center of controversy, as the result of his championship of some highly unpopular causes. He declared himself a stanch pacifist in Germany during World War I and brought down upon his head a storm of violent criticism from all sides. When outstanding representatives of German art and science signed, following the German invasion of Belgium in violation of treaty, the "Manifesto of Ninety-two German Intellectuals," asserting that "German culture and German militarism are identical," Dr. Einstein refused to sign and again faced ostracism and the wrath of the multitudes. But he never wavered when his conscience dictated that he take a course of action, no matter how unpopular. One of these occasions came on Jan.

12, 1953, when he wrote to President Harry S. Truman: "My conscience compels me to urge you to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg," the two convicted atomic spies who were executed five months later. In June, 1953, he wrote a letter to a school teacher in which he characterized certain tactics of a Congressional investigating committee as "a kind of inquisition" that "violates the spirit of the Constitution," and advised the "minority of intellectuals" to refuse to testify on the ground that "it is shameful for a blameless citizen to submit to such an inquisition." Faced with this evil, he said, he could "see only the revolutionary way of non-cooperation in the sense of Gandhi's." Later that year Dr. Einstein advised a witness not to answer any questions by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, relating to personal beliefs, politics, associations with other people, reading, thinking and writing, as a violation of the First Amendment, which provides constitutional guarantees of free speech and associations. The witness, in refusing to cooperate with the subcommittee then headed by Senator McCarthy, said he was doing so on the advice of Dr.

Einstein, who confirmed the witness's statement. "He was a severe critic of modern methods of education. "It is nothing short of a miracle," he said, "that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. For this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom." His political ideal, he emphasized frequently, was democracy. The distinctions separating the social classes, he wrote, "are false. In the last analysis they rest on force. I am convinced that degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors * * *. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to such regimes as exist in Russia and Italy today." This was written in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. Dr. Einstein believed that a socialist planned economy was the only way to eliminate the inequalities of capitalism. However, he fully recognized that "planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual." His love for the oppressed also led him to become a strong supporter of Zionism. In November, 1952, following the death of Chaim Weizmann, Dr.

Einstein was asked if he would accept the Presidency of Israel. He replied that he was deeply touched by the offer but that he was not suited for the position. He never undertook functions he could not fulfill to his satisfaction, he said, and he felt he was not qualified in the area of human relationships. Chairman of Atomic Unit On Aug. 6, 1945, when the world was electrified with the news that an atomic bomb had exploded over Japan, the significance of relativity was intuitively grasped by the millions. From then on the destiny of mankind hung on a thin mathematical thread. Dr. Einstein devoted much of his time and energy in an attempt to arouse the world's consciousness to its dangers. He became the chairman of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, organized to make the American people aware of the potential horrors of atomic warfare and the necessity for the international control of atomic energy.

He believed that real peace could be achieved only by total disarmament and the establishment of a "restricted world government," a "supranational judicial and executive body empowered to decide questions of immediate concern to the security of the nations." "The hydrogen bomb," he said in 1950, "appears on the public horizon as a probably attainable goal. * * * If successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere, and hence annihilation of any life on earth, has been brought within the range of technical possibilities." He found recreation from his labors in playing the grand piano that stood in the solitary den in the garret of his residence. Much of his leisure time, too, was spent in playing the violin. He was especially fond of playing trios and quartets with musical friends. "In my life," he said once, explaining his great love for music, "the artistically visionary plays no mean role. After all, the work of a research scientist germinates upon the soil of imagination, of vision. Just as an artist arrives at his conceptions partly by intuition, so a scientist must also have a certain amount of intuition." While he did not believe in a formal, dogmatic religion, Dr.

Einstein, like all true mystics, was of a deeply religious nature. He referred to it as the cosmic religion, which he defined as a seeking on the part of the individual who feels it "to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance." "I assert," he wrote for The New York Times on Nov. 9, 1930, "that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer creation in scientific thought cannot come into being can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work turned away as it is from immediate, practical life, can grow." "The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience," he wrote "is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, also has given rise to religion.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men. "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human fraility. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature. "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." "The most incomprehensible thing about the world," he said on another occasion, "is that it is comprehensible." Albert Einstein | Atomic Heritage Foundation Atomic Heritage Foundation Scientist, Nobel Prize Winner Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Einstein influenced the beginning of the Manhattan Project. In collaboration with Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 , warning of possible German nuclear weapons research and proposing that the United States begin its own research into atomic energy. Einstein played no role in the Manhattan Project, having been denied a security clearance in July 1940 due to his pacifist tendencies. After World War II, he worked to control nuclear proliferation.

He later regretted signing the letter to Roosevelt, saying in a Newsweek interview that "had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing." Scientific Contributions In 1896, Einstein began studying to be a physics and mathematics teacher at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. He graduated in 1901, the same year he became a citizen of Switzerland. He then worked at the Swiss Patent Office. Einstein earned his Ph.D from the University of Zurich during his “miracle year,” 1905, where he published four groundbreaking papers and won notice from academics. Einstein's special theory of relativity sought to harmonize the laws of mechanics and laws of the electromagnetic field. His investigations also helped establish the photon theory of light. Based on the special theory of relativity, he proposed a theory of gravitation, and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." For more on Einstein's scientific contributions, visit the Nobel Prize website .

Later Years As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein left for the United States and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ in 1933. Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Einstein turned down an offer to serve as President of Israel, and was a co-founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He died on April 18, 1955. Albert Einstein's Timeline 1879 Mar 14th Born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany. 1896 Entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. 1901 Received his diploma, acquired Swiss citizenship, and accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard working on the famous letter A signed portrait of Niels Bohr, James Franck, Albert Einstein, and Isidor I.

Rabi Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein Related Profiles Albert Einstein born - Mar 14, 1879 - HISTORY.com Albert Einstein born Publisher A+E Networks On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein is born, the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity drastically altered man’s view of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb. After a childhood in Germany and Italy, Einstein studied physics and mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zurich, Switzerland. He became a Swiss citizen and in 1905 was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich while working at the Swiss patent office in Bern. That year, which historians of Einstein’s career call the annus mirabilis–the “miracle year”–he published five theoretical papers that were to have a profound effect on the development of modern physics.

In the first of these, titled “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” Einstein theorized that light is made up of individual quanta (photons) that demonstrate particle-like properties while collectively behaving like a wave. The hypothesis, an important step in the development of quantum theory, was arrived at through Einstein’s examination of the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which some solids emit electrically charged particles when struck by light. This work would later earn him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the second paper, he devised a new method of counting and determining the size of the atoms and molecules in a given space, and in the third he offered a mathematical explanation for the constant erratic movement of particles suspended in a fluid, known as Brownian motion. These two papers provided indisputable evidence of the existence of atoms, which at the time was still disputed by a few scientists. Einstein’s fourth groundbreaking scientific work of 1905 addressed what he termed his special theory of relativity. In special relativity, time and space are not absolute, but relative to the motion of the observer.

Thus, two observers traveling at great speeds in regard to each other would not necessarily observe simultaneous events in time at the same moment, nor necessarily agree in their measurements of space. In Einstein’s theory, the speed of light, which is the limiting speed of any body having mass, is constant in all frames of reference. In the fifth paper that year, an exploration of the mathematics of special relativity, Einstein announced that mass and energy were equivalent and could be calculated with an equation, E=mc2. Although the public was not quick to embrace his revolutionary science, Einstein was welcomed into the circle of Europe’s most eminent physicists and given professorships in Zýrich, Prague, and Berlin. In 1916, he published “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity,” which proposed that gravity, as well as motion, can affect the intervals of time and of space. According to Einstein, gravitation is not a force, as Isaac Newton had argued, but a curved field in the space-time continuum, created by the presence of mass.

An object of very large gravitational mass, such as the sun, would therefore appear to warp space and time around it, which could be demonstrated by observing starlight as it skirted the sun on its way to earth. In 1919, astronomers studying a solar eclipse verified predictions Einstein made in the general theory of relativity, and he became an overnight celebrity. Later, other predictions of general relativity, such as a shift in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the probable existence of black holes, were confirmed by scientists. During the next decade, Einstein made continued contributions to quantum theory and began work on a unified field theory, which he hoped would encompass quantum mechanics and his own relativity theory as a grand explanation of the workings of the universe. As a world-renowned public figure, he became increasingly political, taking up the cause of Zionism and speaking out against militarism and rearmament. In his native Germany, this made him an unpopular figure, and after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 Einstein renounced his German citizenship and left the country. He later settled in the United States, where he accepted a post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

He would remain there for the rest of his life, working on his unified field theory and relaxing by sailing on a local lake or playing his violin. He became an American citizen in 1940. In 1939, despite his lifelong pacifist beliefs, he agreed to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of a group of scientists who were concerned with American inaction in the field of atomic-weapons research. Like the other scientists, he feared sole German possession of such a weapon. He played no role, however, in the subsequent Manhattan Project and later deplored the use of atomic bombs against Japan. After the war, he called for the establishment of a world government that would control nuclear technology and prevent future armed conflict. In 1950, he published his unified field theory, which was quietly criticized as a failure. A unified explanation of gravitation, subatomic phenomena, and electromagnetism remains elusive today. Albert Einstein, one of the most creative minds in human history, died in Princeton in 1955.

Related Videos Albert Einstein - Biographical Albert Einstein The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 Albert Einstein Questions and Answers on Albert Einstein Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree. During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne.

In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton * . He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945. After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics. In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists. Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important. Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East, and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world.

He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935. Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey. From Nobel Lectures , Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel . It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures . To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. * Albert Einstein was formally associated with the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey.

Albert Einstein - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Einstein’s Early Life (1879-1904) Born on March 14, 1879, in the southern German city of Ulm, Albert Einstein grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Munich. As a child, Einstein became fascinated by music (he played the violin), mathematics and science. He dropped out of school in 1894 and moved to Switzerland, where he resumed his schooling and later gained admission to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship, and remained officially stateless before becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901. Did You Know? Almost immediately after Albert Einstein learned of the atomic bomb's use in Japan, he became an advocate for nuclear disarmament. He formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and backed Manhattan Project scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his opposition to the hydrogen bomb. While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry.

The couple had an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, of whom little is known. After finding a position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in 1903; they would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910). Einstein’s Miracle Year (1905) While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in 1905 alone. In the first paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. The second article contained Einstein’s experimental proof of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the phenomenon of Brownian motion, in which tiny particles were suspended in water.

In the third and most famous article, titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein confronted the apparent contradiction between two principal theories of physics: Isaac Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwell’s idea that the speed of light was a constant. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), and that the speed of light is a constant in all inertial frames. A fourth paper concerned the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, concepts viewed previously as completely separate. Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 (where “c” was the constant speed of light) expressed this relationship. From Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932) Einstein continued working at the patent office until 1909, when he finally found a full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. In 1913, he arrived at the University of Berlin, where he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

The move coincided with the beginning of Einstein’s romantic relationship with a cousin of his, Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would eventually marry after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. This theory found that gravity, as well as motion, can affect time and space. According to Einstein’s equivalence principle–which held that gravity’s pull in one direction is equivalent to an acceleration of speed in the opposite direction–if light is bent by acceleration, it must also be bent by gravity. In 1919, two expeditions sent to perform experiments during a solar eclipse found that light rays from distant stars were deflected or bent by the gravity of the sun in just the way Einstein had predicted. The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newton’s, more than 250 years before, and the results made a tremendous splash worldwide, with the London Times proclaiming a “Revolution in Science” and a “New Theory of the Universe.” Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands in the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, as his work on relativity remained controversial at the time. Einstein soon began building on his theories to form a new science of cosmology, which held that the universe was dynamic instead of static, and was capable of expanding and contracting. Einstein Moves to the United States (1933-39) A longtime pacifist and a Jew, Einstein became the target of hostility in Weimar Germany, where many citizens were suffering plummeting economic fortunes in the aftermath of defeat in the Great War. In December 1932, a month before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Einstein made the decision to emigrate to the United States, where he took a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . He would never again enter the country of his birth. By the time Einstein’s wife Elsa died in 1936, he had been involved for more than a decade with his efforts to find a unified field theory, which would incorporate all the laws of the universe, and those of physics, into a single framework.

In the process, Einstein became increasingly isolated from many of his colleagues, who were focused mainly on the quantum theory and its implications, rather than on relativity. Einstein’s Later Life (1939-1955) In the late 1930s, Einstein’s theories, including his equation E=mc2, helped form the basis of the development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, at the urging of the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could gain the upper hand. Einstein, who became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship, was never asked to participate in the resulting Manhattan Project, as the U.S. government suspected his socialist and pacifist views. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer extended by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s premier, to become president of Israel. Throughout the last years of his life, Einstein continued his quest for a unified field theory.

Though he published an article on the theory in Scientific American in 1950, it remained unfinished when he died, of an aortic aneurysm, five years later. In the decades following his death, Einstein’s reputation and stature in the world of physics only grew, as physicists began to unravel the mystery of the so-called “strong force” (the missing piece of his unified field theory) and space satellites further verified the principles of his cosmology. Tags Albert Einstein Albert Einstein Can You Believe It? There is a crater on the Moon named after Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He was the first child born to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. Though he attended school as a young boy, he also received instruction at home on Judaism and violin. By the age of twelve he had taught himself geometry. At the age of sixteen he failed an exam in order to qualify to train as an electrical engineer. He remained in school and developed anew plan for his future. Einstein decided to study math and physics so he could become a teacher. Einstein thought he would be good at this because he could think mathematically and abstractly while lacking imagination and practicality.

In 1896 he renounced his German citizenship. He was not a citizen of any country until 1901 when he became a citizen of Switzerland. In 1900 he graduated as a teacher of math and physics. His teachers did not think very highly of him though so he had difficulty being recommended for a job at a university. In 1901 he took a job as a temporary high school teacher and married Mileva Maritsch. The couple had two sons prior to divorcing. Einstein later married his cousin Elsa Einstein. From 1902 through 1909, Einstein worked in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland. While working in the patent office he published many papers on theoretical physics. He earned a Ph.D. in 1905. In 1905 Einstein wrote a paper on what is now known as the special theory of relativity. This paper contained two hypotheses. The first stated that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. The second hypothesis stated that the speed of light was a constant. Later that year Einstein also showed how mass and energy were equivalent.

Following an impressive few years of work, Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern. In 1909 he finally got a post at a university when he became a faculty member at the University of Zurich. In 1911 Einstein taught at Carl-Ferdinand University in Prague. The following year he returned to Germany to continue his work. In 1916 Einstein published his general theory of relativity. This theory linked gravitation , acceleration and the four dimensional space-time. With this theory he was able to account for the variations in the orbital motions of the planets. He also predicted that starlight in the vicinity of a massive object such as the Sun could be bent. This was confirmed in 1919 during a solar eclipse . This further increased the adulation with which the press viewed Einstein. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect. This work proposed that light be considered as consisting of particles called photons. Einstein further proposed that the energy the photon contains is proportional to the frequency of the radiation. Einstein was not only a scientist, but also a social activist and a humanitarian. He spoke out against the German involvement in World War I.

In 1920 a demonstration interrupted a lecture given by Einstein in Berlin. There was also growing criticism of his work by certain Germans. Einstein felt the disruptions and criticisms were occurring because he was Jewish. Einstein traveled the world lecturing and raising funds for a planned Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His hectic lifestyle led to a physical collapse in 1928. By 1930 he was once again travelling the world, especially the United States. On one of these visits he was offered a post at Princeton University in New Jersey. Einstein accepted, believing that he would spend seven months of the year in Munich and five months of the year in the United States. In December of 1932 he left for the United States. A month after his departure the Nazis assumed control of Germany. Einstein never returned to Germany. In 1935 Einstein was granted permanent residency in the United States and became a citizen in 1940. In 1944 he hand wrote his 1905 theory on relativity and allowed it to be auctioned. It sold for six million dollars, which he donated to the effort to win World War II.

The work resides in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. By 1949 Einstein was in failing health. His health was so bad that when offered the presidency of Israel in 1952 he had to decline it. In 1955, one week prior to his death, he agreed to have his name appear on a manifesto calling for the end to nuclear weapons. He died in April of 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein was cremated and his ashes were spread at an undisclosed location. Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property :: Einstein Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property Albert Einstein: Physicist and World Citizen Albert Einstein at his desk in the patent office in 1904 (Photo by Lucien Chavan, 1868-1942) He was voted as «Person of the Century» by Time Magazine and is probably the most popular scientist ever born: Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. He grew up in Munich and moved to Switzerland in 1895 where he studied at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich.

In 1901 he became a Swiss citizen. In 1905, at the age of twenty-six, he began his astounding career while employed at the patent office in Bern. He published five ground-breaking papers during just one extraordinary year. By the age of 30 he had been made a professor in Zurich. Seven years later he went on to publish his famous theory of relativity. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his quantum theory, and in 1933 he was made professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the United States where he continued to live for the rest of his life. He died in 1955. Einstein not only changed the face of physics, he also made a name for himself through his activism for international understanding and peace. Last modified:21.04.2011 12:51

Question: Which scientist was born in Germany in 1879, became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and later became a US citizen in 1940?
Answer: Albert Einstein